Huayi Brothers "Fall"

After eight hundred, Huayi Brothers returned to the spotlight. It was a contradictory company.

In fact, Huayi has never left the focus of public opinion. In people's impression, this is China's top film company, with stars, famous directors and blockbusters.

At its peak, Huayi's market value exceeded 80 billion yuan. Among China's top actresses, "four Dan shuangbing", Huayi covers half (Zhou Xun, Fan Bingbing, Li Bingbing). Blockbusters such as "if you are the one", "Di Renjie", "wind", "journey to the west" and other blockbusters have repeatedly set box office records, with the box office of its main films exceeding 20 billion yuan. It can be seen that it was once brilliant.

But it seems like a long time ago. In the previous half year report, its revenue was 324 million yuan, down 69.88% year on year, and the net loss was 231 million yuan. Last year, Huayi Brothers made a net loss of 3.960 billion yuan. The top stars who once surrounded Huayi had already established their own homes. Before 800, the box office of "little wish" and other films were not as good as expected, and even the outside world began to doubt the production level of Huayi.

The financial report shows that in the first half of the year, Huayi's balance of cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period was only 134 million yuan, compared with 1.577 billion yuan in the same period last year. Over the same period, Huayi Brothers' total interest bearing debt was 3.284 billion yuan, including short-term loans and non current liabilities due within one year totaling 2.584 billion yuan. It can be seen that the cash flow is tight.

The box office of "eight hundred" is close to 2.8 billion, but it is difficult to fundamentally improve the performance of Huayi, the main investor, for the blockbuster film. According to Huayi's announcement on August 26, as of August 25, the film had been released in mainland China for five days, with a cumulative box office revenue of more than 1.155 billion yuan, which was derived from the film's operating income range of 205 to 245 million yuan. Due to the reduction and exemption of special funds, this means that Huayi's share ratio in the film is between 17.75% and 21.21%. In view of the 43% share ratio between producers and distributors, it means that Huayi has invested more than half of the film. The total investment of the film has not been announced, but the industry rumors are more than 500 million yuan. Huayi's income in the film is difficult to exceed the total investment in the film.

The more important impact of "800" is to boost the market's confidence in Huayi, although at present, the effect is limited. By the end of September 18, Huayi closed at 5.52 yuan, with a total market value of 15.390 billion yuan. On August 14, the first high point of Huayi's stock price was 6.37 yuan, which was the first high point of Huayi's stock price in the near future. Since then, it has returned to the decline range. On August 21, the release date of "eight hundred" rose straight to the recent highest point of 6.80 yuan. After that, the stock price continued to move downward in the fluctuation. At the beginning of April, Huayi's share price was only 3.25 yuan.

There are multiple reasons for capital bearish. In the golden age, Huayi had Feng Xiaogang, a booming film market and capital environment, loose policies and distribution advantages. However, all these changed with the changes of the general environment.

"The external environment in the past no longer exists. Where should we go? No film company has really found its way. " Some senior executives of the listed companies of shadow investment lamented to the reporter of the 21st century economic report. He does not deny that the whole industry is facing similar problems.

Ballast

When it comes to the fall of Huayi, it is inseparable from how Huayi rose.

In 1994, when Wang Zhongjun returned to China to start his own business, his main direction was advertising companies. Film was only one of the investment paths in the future. This former scout might not have thought of becoming a film tycoon and chairman of Huayi.

Feng Xiaogang was not brilliant at that time. In the Beijing Film and television industry, he was not a professional. At first, he worked as an artist in the Beijing TV Art Center, and later became a screenwriter of the story of the editorial department.

The first time they cooperated was in 1999, when Wang Zhongjun, a newly established advertising career, invested in Feng Xiaogang's third new year's film "endless". At that time, Wang Zhongjun also cast Chen Kaige's "Jingke stabbing the king of Qin", Jiang Wen's "the devil is coming", and the main melody film "my 1919".

The result is that the box office of Jingke stabbing king is not ideal, the devil is coming has not been released, and endless has ushered in a bumper harvest. This gave Wang Zhongjun the confidence to invest in films and began to hold hands with Feng Xiaogang.

It is worth noting that Wang Zhongjun also devoted his enthusiasm to Jiang Wen, who was very popular at that time. In addition to "the devil is coming", he also chose Jiang Wen as the leading actor in the three films of "gun hunting", "hero of heaven and earth" and "barber".

But Jiang Wen's "domineering" made Wang Zhongjun let go. During the shooting process of "barber", Jiang Wen and director Chen Yifei had a serious confrontation, and finally the producer chose to "abandon Jiang Baochen".

When Wang Zhongjun "wandered" Jiang Wen, Feng Xiaogang also tried something else. In 2000, his directed work "I am your father" was produced by Beijing Film Studio.

Finally, the two choose each other. To a large extent, Feng Xiaogang, a commercial film director, highly agrees with Wang Zhongjun in his understanding of production and business.

Feng Xiaogang was a ballast stone for Huayi in the early stage. In his book "the era of blockbusters", filmmaker Qiu yuan mentioned that Huayi has completed the internal circulation in its operation. For the film and television works invested by Huayi, its artists are preferred to perform, and its singers sing the theme song; Huayi acts as the agent for film placement and placement of advertisements, and Huayi is responsible for domestic and international distribution. In this way, Huayi film and television project has driven the development of other related businesses. All the business core comes from the film project, and the film core competitiveness comes from Feng Xiaogang.

In 2003, Feng Xiaogang's comedy "mobile phone" won the box office title of the year; in 2008, his romantic comedy "if you are the one" broke the box office record of Chinese films. Feng Xiaogang's small step has led to a big step in Huayi's business ecology.

In addition, Huayi also ushered in the film industry. According to the prospectus released in 2009, the box office of Chinese films increased from about 900 million yuan in 2003 to more than 4.3 billion yuan in 2008, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 40%. At the same time, the monopoly of state-owned enterprises in the film market has been broken under the increasingly loose policy, and private enterprises have been able to set foot in most fields of the film industry. The market is in short supply. In 2010, the State Council promulgated the guiding opinions on promoting the prosperity and development of the film industry, which once again urged the development of the industry. From 2011 to 2018, the compound growth rate of China's box office was 24.5%, and the compound growth rate of film viewers was 24.5%.

In such a grand occasion, Huayi has established its own distribution channel and even cinema system. A giant spanning the whole industry has just completed, and blockbusters have been continuously produced.

At that time, the capital environment was relatively loose. Therefore, in 2015, Huayi stood at a high market value of over 80 billion yuan.

Fall time

When the scenery is just right, the risks are already hidden.

From the outside, Huayi Brothers' turning point is in 2018, which is the ninth year of its listing. In that year, Huayi had a net loss of 909 million yuan, a prelude to sustained losses.

Figure IC Photo

The impairment loss of Yihua was RMB 1.39 billion, accounting for RMB 1.39 billion impairment loss. The loss was mainly due to the acquisition of Zhejiang Changsheng and Dongyang Meila at a super high premium.

In September 2013, Huayi Brothers acquired Zhejiang Changsheng, which was only three months old, at a price of 252 million yuan. Zhang Guoli was the controlling shareholder and actual controller of the company. Two years later, Huayi Brothers purchased 70% of Dongyang Haohan with 756 million yuan in cash. The company's main shareholders include Yang Ying, Li Chen, Chen he, Feng Shaofeng and other six artists.

In November 2015, Huayi announced that it would acquire 70% equity of Dongyang Meila, with Feng Xiaogang as the main shareholder. The transaction consideration was 1.05 billion yuan, and the net assets of the company was - 5500 yuan. Behind all this, Huayi is using capital to bind core creators.

But the problem is, the wind, gradually stopped. Even the core content pillar of Huayi, Feng Xiaogang, has entered the risk period. High premium hit the new normal, Huayi cost hard to level.

The market is changing so fast that Feng Xiaogang's ups and downs probably began in 1942. Focusing on the drought in Henan Province, the film is a rare serious theme film of Feng Xiaogang, which eventually won 371 million yuan at the box office and lost money. It was 2012.

The next year's "private order" won 714 million yuan at the box office, which once again proved Feng Xiaogang's commercial appeal, but suffered a collapse of word-of-mouth. The above changes did not affect Huayi's high price acquisition of Dongyang Meila in 2015.

In 2019, Huayi made provision for impairment of goodwill of RMB 599 million, of which Dongyang Meila made provision of RMB 360 million. In 2018, Dongyang Meila failed to fulfill its performance commitment.

The key hit is that the production of "mobile phone 2", directed by Feng Xiaogang and starred by ge you, Fan Bingbing and Zhang Guoli, started shooting in May 2018, which has become the fuse of the tax storm in the film and television industry. Finally, Fan Bingbing was punished and Feng Xiaogang tended to keep a low profile. The silence of the iconic characters is undoubtedly a great harm to Huayi.

In addition, in 2019, Huayi's main investment and control films were absent, and the annual revenue was 2.186 billion yuan, down 43.81% year-on-year. This makes the outside world begin to question the content production ability of Huayi.

In addition to the engine short circuit, Huayi's external conditions are no longer. After 2011, the box office of single screen in China has declined. The intensified competition has led to the decrease of operating efficiency and difficulty in cost recovery. Based on the financial reports of different companies, the box office revenue of single screen in 2019 is 921000 yuan, down 9.3% year-on-year, reaching the lowest level since 2010. The whole industry is sending a "surplus" signal.

Policy is also tightening. In October 2018, the State Administration of Taxation issued the notice on further standardizing the tax order of the film and television industry. From October 10, 2018 to the end of July 2019, the State Administration of Taxation deployed the work of standardizing the tax order of the film and television industry. This is a huge response in the industry.

Huayi, as the center of the whirlpool, naturally causes capital reflexive evasion. Moreover, affected by the macro-economy, the difficulty of financing has greatly increased, which is tantamount to worse. According to wind statistics, the investment of venture capital funds in the film and entertainment industry has dropped sharply from 64.144 billion yuan in 2018 to 14.837 billion yuan in 2019, which shows the cold market.

In addition to internal and external environmental changes, Huayi channel advantage is also weakening. With the expansion of online ticketing, especially after the epidemic, online ticket purchasing has become the only channel, and Huayi's advantages have been gradually offset. With channel advantages, Ali films (taopiao) are not only involved in the distribution, but also strive to step into the production link.

This year, Ali film's "I'll wait for you at the end of time" won the box office title. Compared with Huayi, Ali has advantages in channels, funds and other key resources, and even is a creditor of Huayi.

In this case, Yihua must find a way out. "Multiple times" is the implementation of the mode of "returning to the outside world" and "concentrating on the contents of the film and television".

Huayi is not without cards. "Eight hundred" has proved its investment vision and operational advantages. Wang Zhongjun's cross-border friend circle is not common in the film industry. On April 28, Huayi announced an additional offering of 2.29 billion yuan to Tencent, Ali and Shandong Jingda. At present, the additional issue has not been approved.

"Wang Zhongjun is a man of temperament, which is also the reason why he got up and the trigger point of Huayi's fall. But it's hard to say what you're looking for. " From executives of film companies to directors of film investment, many key figures in the industry have made such statements.

But at the other end, Huayi is a real-life show, and there are many bears. "Huayi model is too light, resulting in insufficient control over the project. The shortage of cash flow is also doomed to be unable to invest for a long time. Offline projects emphasize a long stream, which Huayi does not have. " Another film company executives to the 21st century economic reporter analysis.

In fact, the original film giants have begun to divert. Bona film is ready to go public, cinema line is still an important extension direction, light is investing in animation. Every giant is experiencing the changes of the big environment and the erosion of Internet companies.

Where to go, every operator must make a choice.

Reporters observe the choice of Huayi and the division of film giants